Goosed

I detest geese. I am an animate being lover extraordinaire, with the exclusion of geese. You may inquire why this peculiar species engenderers such as anathema, what could make a sane, rational, mature adult female who is otherwise very kind, to experience the manner I do.

When I was five old age old we moved from the seashore of Beaver State to Montana. My Grammy and Grandpa had moved there to homestead and my parents decided to travel out too. The ocean air was difficult on my lungs and I was ill all the time. There was a 100 acre farm for me to run around on, to construct up my strength.

We drove to Treasure State in a Chartreuse 1950 Ford. Mama filled the dorsum place with pillows and set my babe blood brother in an apple box beside me. Iodine was in complaint of him because I was dependable and loved babies. I could change a nappy as well as women four times my age. There were no place belts back then, so our nest was for safety as well as for sleeping.

I was so excited the twenty-four hours we left. We were going on an adventure. To a sallow small miss who only attended four hebdomads of 1st grade, and spent the residual of the time in bed, sick with fever, this was the best thing that ever happened. I had been set in first class at five. By then I read out of medical books and immense cryptic tomes. They passed me to 2nd class by having instructor give me a accomplishments test. I loved school, read everything and made up rimes all the time.

My blood brother Richard was my obsession. Unlike an aged kid who resents the newcomer, I drop right into taking attention of him and would sway him by the hour. He was four months-old when he rode to Treasure State in an apple box. Everything about him was sweet-smelling and fascinating. Mama had given me two coloring books and a box of crayons, but I spent most of the trip fussing over the baby.

As we were crossing the mountain pass, getting stopping point to our destination, I heard my Mama pant and the adjacent thing I knew she was over the dorsum of the seat, holding my face into the pillows, shrieking, “Don’t look!” It was old age later that I learned there had been an accident and a adult male was decapitated, his exanimate caput on the hoodlum of his pickup. Most likely Iodine would never have got looked, but the incident loomed big in my child’s head and I was crazy with curiosity, and my fertile imaginativeness went right consecutive to work. A large trade only goes a large trade if person points it out. When I raised my children I remembered this incident and forced myself not to overreact to something a kid might not even notice.

The snowfall in the base on balls captured my senses. That was the first snowfall I had ever seen. There may have got been snowfall on the Beaver State Coast, but it was never in such as huge, random piles. Near the top we had to halt and wait for a route grader to plough a way for the autos in line. A airplane pilot auto would choose five waiting travellers and guide them across to the start of the down side. Respective times during our slow microscope slide down, households of cervid would hop down hills and run across the road. Dad would use the brake system and curse word at the deer, but we didn’t hit one. There were all sorts of animate beings around. I would inquire Mama what each 1 was and transcript it down in my hoarded wealth book.

Daddy and Mama took bends driving the Ford. I had to maintain Richard absolutely quiet while Dad napped in the rider seat. Dad was a good man, a difficult worker and a just man, but he had a mean value pique to him, and everybody worked existent difficult to assist him not lose it. I would hold Richard to my thorax and Mama would bind a dish towel around him and necktie it at my back. For hours I would coo to him and stone him. The most particular feeling in this world is a warm small babe next to your heart. He was the first of many babes I mothered. Now the babes are grown, but my two black-footed ferrets now have the rocking. My female will kip for hours being held.

I could state when we were going into Montana. Dad stopped the John Ford on the crushed rock to the side of the road. Mama got out and they took bends taking images of all of us underneath a large mark that said, “Welcome to Montana, the Big Sky Country”. There was a long manner to travel yet, but this was the functionary sealing wax on our trip.

The air had go sweet and warm, and Dad rolled down the windows. I savored that fresh air blowing across my face. The smells were wonderful. Flowers and farms and immense Fields of corn each contributed to the intoxicant brew. Everything was new and different, and though I had cried about having to go forth the ocean behind, this state set its enchantment on me from the start.

Grammy lived seven statute miles outside of Kalispell. We went from the main route to a pitch route and then to a crushed crushed rock road. Mama had lived in Treasure State before. She had kinsperson everywhere. My grandfather and his immature new married woman lived in Whitefish with their three children, my mother’s step-brothers and step-sister. Iola was a big, comfy adult female who taught school in Whitefish for years. I didn’t desire to betray my loyalty to Grammy, so I tried existent difficult not to wish her, but she was so sweet it was impossible.

For the minute though, these were future people. Grammy’s spread was manner out in the country. Finally my Mama sighted the house that was captured on movie by Grammy’s old Kodak with its fold-out lens. I hadn’t cognize what to expect, so I was enchanted with everything. All the manner out my folks had murmured about Grammy’s imaginativeness and how the spread was just a apparent old homestead. As we turned down the crushed rock route to the soil path I tried to imbibe in every single sensation. To memorise everything I saw. A fantastic small achromatic bungalow sat off the road. There was a large redness barn out back and respective outbuildings. There were flowers everywhere. Grammy passed her love of horticulture on to me.

There was dither and disturbance as Mama and Grammy cried and Walter, her new husband, and Dad shook hands. Grandpa swooped me up and asked me what I thought about everything. I was mute. Centripetal overload rendered me speechless. But Grandpa still smelled like Grandpa…a mixture of flannel shirts and the old sweetbrier tobacco pipe he kept clenched between his large yellowness teeth. He understood that the babe would be the centre of attending and took attention to do me experience of import too.

Grammy still peered quizzically through her wire-framed glasses, her sweet bluish eyes a small spot out of focus. She was a small spot of a woman, not even fold to five feet tall. So Grandpa set me down and she swooped me up in her floury, flowered apron and I felt repose fill the world.

The electrical hadn’t yet made it the seven statute miles out to Grammy’s. Grammy hated the electrical anyway. Warm tapers and kerosine lamps set soft borders on the world at night. There was an privy manner out back, and once I smelled it, I understood its isolation. Right behind the house was a large hill with a door in it. The root basement that kept nutrients over the winter. I excused myself to the bathroom, or privy in this case, and began running down the well-worn path. I had just passed the first outbuilding when something came boom out of hiding, hissing and squawking, wings a million statute miles wide. It was there I became acquainted with the species cognize as goose. Before Grandpa could attain me these disgusting domestic fowl pushed at me with their wings and screeched so loudly Iodine was certain I would travel deaf.

Candy and Dandy, the spread geese. One or the other of them kept nipping at my shirt and trying to acquire their beaks around my thin arms. Grandpa finally rescued me and sent the homicidal couple to the side of the shed. The grownups were all riant and I realized it was something I was supposed to happen amusing.

Candy and Bang-Up stood at the border of the outbuilding, still hissing and flapping their tremendous wings. Grandpa walked me on past them and allow me go on to the outhouse. I had never used an privy before. Since there were no gas stations or remainder countries back then, travellers establish a brushy topographic point to do a stop, and I had done that many times. The privy stood on a small hill, and had a half-moon inch the door. The boards were unsmooth and uneven. When I pulled on the leather strap to open up the door a cloud of flies were buzzing inside. Big bluish bottle wings that shone glistening in the sunshine peering through the sides. The odor hit me and for a minute I considered just going back to the house, but I had to travel so I stepped up inside. There were two holes with wooden eyelids and the obligatory Sears and Roebuck catalogs.

Somehow I managed not to fall into the rancid holes and wiped myself with a page of wringer washers. I would have got got taken a deep breath, but the malodor would probably have leveled me.

Watching carefully through a cleft in the privy door, I looked around for the black duo. They were no where to be seen, so I started down the way to the house. As I came even with the tack room I heard murmuring noises. My immature miss inherent aptitude just knew it was the geese again. It was. Out from around the tack room they came, pagans from hell.

Grammy’s spread was wonderful. I ran around so much that first twenty-four hours that I was awake all nighttime screaming with cramps. It was my first memory of pain. Grammy and Mama took bends massaging my calves. Grammy got a jar of bear lubricating oil and worked it into my legs. Finally I drop asleep, after one of Grammy’s hot toddies. The nastiest material you ever set in your mouth. It was her remedy for everything and I grew to apprehension any mark of frailty that mightiness phone call for forcing that noxious unstable down my throat. It had another benefit though. It was whisky laced with lemon and who cognizes what else. I never had to worry about becoming a drinker - just the odor of whisky nauseates me.

Next twenty-four hours the time finally came when I couldn’t set off a trip to the privy any longer. I prayed one of the grownups would bodyguard me past those Nazi geese. Wrong. I was a large miss and they were only geese. As soon as they got used to me everything would be fine.

So, there I went, wobbling on legs that threatened to fall in beneath me. Ardent hurting from my calves pulsing with my heartbeat. I slunk along as quietly as I could, looking for any mark of Candy and Dandy. About midway I heard a rustling and my bosom went cold. It was a rustling of goose wings. Waiting, I knew I would never do it to the outhouse. Here they came! Bullying, biting and beating with their wings. Until they caught wind of the bear grease. Their beaks shook like bones as they tried to pass over the lubricating oil off that they had gotten onto themselves from me.

Apparently geese don’t like the odor or taste sensation of bear. Both of them backed off and turned to waddle away. Not feeling particularly sympathetic, I raised my weaponry out broad and went after the devilish duo, squawking at the top of my lungs. Then I began making bear noises, or what I perceived as bear noises. Those geese goose-stepped arsenic fast as they could go. Shrieking in absolute rage, the geese headed for the barn without looking back.

I was drunk with power. For the adjacent few old age I rubbed myself with bear lubricating oil every day. It wasn’t much appreciated at school, but I didn’t care. As long as it kept those atrocious geese away from me, I was thrilled. My small behind remembered the feeling of being goosed and I questioned Supreme Being as to why He had to blow time making geese.

Bring on kings of beasts and hippos, Tasmanian Devils - I’ll take them all on. But if I never saw another goose again in my life I would be delighted.